Horror

Horror is intended to frighten, scare, or startle readers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie and frightening atmosphere. Horror can be either natural or supernatural. Often the central menace in a work of Horror can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society.

The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism.

Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was nineteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.

The Phantom of the Opera is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialisation in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. The novel sold very poorly upon publication in book form and was even out of print several times during the 20th century; it is overshadowed by the success of its various stage and film adaptations. The most notable of these are the 1925 film depiction featuring Lon Chaney, Sr and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical.

Northanger Abbey /ˈnɔrθˌæŋɡər/ was the first of Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, though she had previously made a start on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. According to Cassandra Austen's Memorandum, Susan was written circa 1798–99. It was revised by Austen for the press in 1803, and sold in the same year for £10 to a London bookseller, Crosby & Co., who decided against publishing. In the spring of 1816, the bookseller was content to sell it back to the novelist's brother, Henry Austen, for the exact sum—£10—that he had paid for it at the beginning, not knowing that the writer was by then the author of four popular novels.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is the original title of a novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson that was first published in 1886. The work is commonly known today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde.

"The Masque of the Red Death" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a masquerade ball within seven rooms of his abbey, each decorated with a different color. In the midst of their revelry, a mysterious figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms.

"The Willows" is one of Algernon Blackwood's best known short stories. American horror author H.P. Lovecraft considered it to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature. "The Willows" is an example of early modern horror and is connected within the literary tradition of weird fiction.

The King in Yellow is a collection of tales of the supernatural by Robert W. Chambers, named after a fictional play with the same title that recurs as a motif through some of its stories and first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895. Described by S.T. Joshi as a classic in the field of the supernatural, it contains 10 stories, the first four of which, "The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon" and "The Yellow Sign", mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001.

"The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine The Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication in 1894. On publication it was widely denounced by the press as degenerate and horrific because of its decadent style and sexual content, although it has since garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. Machen’s story was only one of many at the time to focus on Pan as a useful symbol for the power of nature and paganism. The title was possibly inspired by the poem "A Musical Instrument" published in 1862 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which the first line of every stanza ends "... the great god Pan."

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is the title of M. R. James' first collection of ghost stories, published in 1904 . Some later editions under this title contain both the original collection and its successor, More Ghost Stories , combined in one volume.

"The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by author W. W. Jacobs. It was published in England in 1902. The story is based on the famous "setup" in which three wishes are granted. In the story, the paw of a dead monkey is a talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.

Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English short story writer and novelist, one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. He was also a journalist and a broadcasting narrator. S. T. Joshi has stated that "his work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".

Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale, usually simply called Wieland, is the first major work by Charles Brockden Brown. First published in 1798, it distinguishes the true beginning of his career as a writer. Wieland is the first – and most famous – American Gothic novel. It has often been linked to Caleb Williams by William Godwin. Godwin's influence is clear, but Brown's writing is unique in its style. Wieland is often categorized under several sub-genres other than Gothic fiction, including horror, psychological fiction and epistolary fiction, which are listed at Project Gutenberg.

A selection of twelve stories from the creator of detective Holmes and Dr. Watson featuring: The Horror of the Heights, The Leather Funnel, The New Catacomb, The Case of Lady Sannox, The Terror of Blue John Gap, The Brazilian Cat, The Lost Special, The Beetle-Hunter, The Man with the Watches, The Japanned Box, The Black Doctor, The Jew's Breastplate.

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This collection was created October 2013.